Day to Day Scene: Camping up North....way up North.

Last weekend we headed up to Torridon, which is on Scotlands North West coast. It is beautiful, but it was wet. However, we had a great, if slightly mad time. There were meant to be about 8-10 of us, but all sorts of complications meant that instead there were 4. Penny, myself, Danny and Ally made the almost 5 hour drive up north after work on Friday. We arrived seperately on Friday night but found each other using the general rule of "if Scott is lost check the closest pub". We also found a couple of young lassies up for a laugh...Jess from Oz, and Maddie from Sweden, both were nannies over here and up to explore the highlands for the weekend. We all had a couple of drinks, and game of scrabble in the pub, then headed back to the campsite where at 1am we didn't want to wake the neighbours, but we did want to continue our wee party....so off to the ladies loo it was. This is where things got a wee bit mad...but a photo is worth a thousand words...so you can decide how mad yourself.

The next day the girls had left, and Ally, Pen, Danny and myself were left to our devices, Pen and I got up to go get breakfast, and feasted on a breakfast buffet before realising it was set out for hotel residents, not grubby, smelly campers like us .... oops. We deliberated whether we should just walk out and pretend that we were hotel guests....but the obvious difference in appearance between the guests and us left us somewhat obviously not showered, and slightly dishevelled. So I fessed up as Penny legged it out the parking lot...£12 for two brekkies, we both agreed we didn't eat enough...if we'd known it was going to be £12 we would have brought some back for Danny and Ally who were trying to get some sleep after the 100mph winds kept them up most the night....I of course slept like the proverbial log, Penny..not so much.
We got back to find Danny and Ally up and just about human, so we decided to go for a bike ride, and kill time till lunch....the ride led us up a dirt path and saw us get rained on every 10 mins or so of the hour or so we were out cycling. It was worth it as we came across a wee rocky shore with rock pools filled with fish, oysters (Penny kept insisting they were muscles until I showed her what real muscles were) and a dead crab...it was cool. There was an awesome view as well. Then we headed back for some lunch, and a game of pool where Danny got heckled by an older woman (in her 80's?) who very clearly scared the bejesus out of him. We headed back to the campsite and the girls went for a nap while Danny and I played guitar and sang (well I warbled off tune, and off beat but hey it was fun) then went for a bike ride to get some more photo's of Torridon.

After getting back from our ride the girls were up and it was time to get the BBQ going as the rain was only a light drizzle with small bursts of sunshine....so after a few trials and tribulations we managed to completely mangle my cauliflour bakes in the process of BBQ'ing them, and on the other end of the spectrum the beef eaters produced some truly inspiring BBQ burgers, it was all good fun even if Danny did produce more smoke than an Indian smokehouse.
After dinner we had a very quick game of frisbee while the sun was out for about 20 mins, then got ready for another big night out at the pub where we played pool for a while, and then had another game of scrabble before being booted out of the pub....at which point we headed back to the campsite and continued our wee party in the car...where smoking breadsticks seemed like a good idea....it was all fun and games until we collectively just about passed out and decided to head to our beds....
We slept in as best we could Sunday morning and then started to head home in the rain, just like when we arrived. We stopped at a wee cafe for lunch, and then opted to skip out on one last bike ride as we were pretty tired, hungover, and dry...but it was a great weekend despite the rain....and I'm looking forward to the next one already!